Minneapolis Public Schools: Institutional Collapse in Plain Sight

“Something has gone terribly wrong in Minneapolis Public Schools, and we can no longer afford to keep pretending that everything is fine.”

By Don Allen, Ed.S., M.A. Ed., MAT (Doctoral Candidate-ABD)

I’m writing this opening feeling emotionally drained and only slightly optimistic about the work I do. You can call me a disgruntled former employee of the district, or look through the lens of what is right for our children, and when asking questions, the level of retaliation from the district is career-threatening. My opinion is only a snapshot of a bigger learning organization challenge that will likely evoke a range of emotions from you, as well as many that I’ve experienced when trying to understand the seemingly intractable problem of educational inequity for students of color and many white students, and students with disabilities whose parents and families might feel the same frustration, anger, shock, joy, and patient hope. I feel frustrated with all the educational leaders in the Twin Cities who can make a difference for children who are failing academically year after year and, without exception, have chosen to be silent. I feel angry on behalf of children of color (Black and Native American) as well as on behalf of white, as well as students of “culture” (Hispanic and Asian for example) whose families are seeking a rich educational experience that actually supports learning and who have been processed through the system for years with their families being misled to believe that they are learning because they are attending school when in fact the schools they are attending are more like a theater where attendance substitutes for learning.

Last year, around 26,000 MN students were enrolled in Minneapolis Public Schools (MN). An estimated 11,000 students, or about 57 percent of the total number enrolled in the district, participated in the district’s accountability measures for student learning (reading, math, and science). The absence of over half of all enrolled students from the measures used to assess the district’s performance in supporting student learning in 2024 and 2025 (Minnesota School Report Card) is not a minor typo or a statistic that fluctuates from one year to the next; it is a failure of a fundamental part of district management. It’s not a recovery phase (post-Brown vs. the Board, post-COVID, post-George Floyd, or post-ICE); it’s a collapse of human engagement and integrity, and the challenge of systems that must be elaborate box-checkers at the expense of human capital used as a commodity for cash flow. More than half of the city’s schoolchildren have quite literally “opted out” of the tests, through which the district learns how to spend millions of its taxpayer dollars and which teachers (who go through hell) devote their precious teaching time every day. By no means am I talking about the children and families; this missive is looking straight into the eyes of a school district that I attest causes extreme harm to learning and operates more like a social cabal. We should all be worried.

Something has gone terribly wrong in Minneapolis Public Schools, and we can no longer afford to keep pretending that everything is fine. The retaliatory measure imposed on those seeking answers for this collapse must end. Enough already with the endless patience asked of parents, families, and teachers. Enough already with the never-ending parade of new initiatives and plans; was Wayfinder really necessary? Minneapolis Public Schools invested in the Wayfinder SEL curriculum, developed outside of the cultural realities of its student population, raising legitimate concerns about whether a nationally designed, research-based program can truly meet the needs of Black and Brown students in urban schools. Enough already with the district’s promises to become a “high-performing district” and the constant barrage of bureaucratic jargon and PR spin designed to obscure the fact that our kids are not learning. The fact is, the data has been screaming for some time now that something needs to change. Now it is screaming that change is long overdue.

This system, based on the public-facing data, has failed and needs to be re-examined, re-tooled, and replaced. Fixing is not an option.

The deeper problem is that the “academic achievement” being presented as our set of choices is largely an illusion. This phenomenon can be seen in the form of isomorphic conditions within a malfunctioning school district, which is a rather disconcerting state wherein individual schools within the system, regardless of their unique characteristics and individualized challenges, begin to emulate similar structures of organization, instruction, and, most importantly, ineffective leadership within the system. Rather than promoting individualized solutions to unique challenges, each school within the system tends to emulate the familiar, yet ineffective, solutions of its peers within the system, creating a rather cyclical effect wherein systemic malfunction becomes the norm rather than the exception. A malfunctioning school system can thus be described as one in which standardized underperformance has become endemic, resulting from the unthinking adoption of ineffective structures and solutions by leaders who gained status via the Peter Principle.

Keep in mind, being objective, there are some factual considerations:

• Instead of innovating and improving, organizations’ site and district leadership appear to follow and mimic one another to appear legitimate.

• There is uniformity but no actual innovation in bureaucratic behavior.

• The outcome is that academic and leadership performance are low in the district.

Wellstone International High School, South High School, Camden High School, and North High School (not to mention several middle schools, including Olson Middle School) have achievement gaps that would prompt dramatic reform efforts in almost any Minnesota suburban district. Achievement gaps so large you can barely see the tiny dots of student achievement in the distance, with proficiency rates in the single digits or low teens, are not small slips backwards from a previous year; they are schools that have lost their core purpose. Fact: Schools are meant to teach and socialize students in the basics of reading, science, and math. Changing a school’s name because of historical malfeasance does not reflect student achievement.

The surreptitious messaging and public relations tactics are insulting to the general public, especially to educators who have worked within the system and know exactly where the smoke and mirrors are. Yes, from the outside, it looks like graduation rates are up; that is no reason for a celebratory pause; the system is doing exactly what it is designed to do—move children, prepared or not, out. While increasing graduation rates and ensuring every high school graduate has a life plan are crucial, we must be cautious about celebrating these metrics as true success if students lack the skills to navigate life outside of school. The students are not to blame. Many Twin Cities 6–12 grade students, particularly Black and Native American students, have been caught in a post-George Floyd atmosphere of racialized victimization. This has led to a focus on students’ social-emotional needs rather than on teaching the underlying issues of cause, effect, and consequences. The Minneapolis Public Schools have created a new social class that puts our most vulnerable directly into educational and social poverty.

Minneapolis Public Schools exemplifies what I call a “collapse in plain sight,” with some schools I allege becoming subcontractors for the Pipeline to Prison. While appearances may suggest a failure in plain sight, the rest of the system appears to be running just fine; paychecks are issued to everyone every two weeks. We know that MPS students have not done particularly well on state tests, and that there is still a significant need for basic literacy and numeracy skills to be developed at a large number of schools within the system, and that there are large achievement gaps between various subpopulations within the district and the broader world beyond. And so, what might look like dysfunction to others on the surface plays out in a world where the system appears to continue business as usual, even when appearances suggest a collapse in leadership, pedagogy, curriculum, and systemic function. In other words, while district-wide failures are hardly subtle, the broader system appears to continue, with its meetings and reports, programs and initiatives all more or less indistinguishable from their predecessors, as if none of the foregoing failure had actually transpired.

I present several attributes that mark a system of education as modern. These characteristics follow from a perspective on societal order articulated by organizational theorists as isomorphic institutionalism. According to this idea, as it relates to MPS, the institution is liable to come to resemble every other nonperforming institution in neighborhoods with high minority populations, adopting their patterns of misorganization and forms of sorting and categorization because it is so set toward giving each building leader a non-functioning blueprint, copying them as to be more or less indifferent to the potential social benefits such behavior might be said to yield. This means that without fresh ideas and nuanced leaders who question blind spots (such as why only a handful of students showed up for state testing at Camden High School), Minneapolis Public Schools becomes an unsuccessful copycat of other districts, using the same terminology and professional development models. None of this produces different educational results for the children who attend their schools.

What matters is not that students are learning more; what matters is that the entire system now has an air of arrogance and a sense of abandonment of student needs. Our schools and cities need accountability. Schools and school districts can only cover for so long before the public realizes that their promised reforms are failing to benefit most students. If a district has 70% of its students failing to meet state standards, if more and more schools are falling out of the accountability system each year, and if the leadership of a school district has failed to reform despite years of “failing schools,” there’s no longer a debate over which reforms are better than others. There’s a debate over whether a failing institution can be salvaged or whether it needs a drastic overhaul. At this tipping point, for the sake of One Minnesota and our future up-and-coming workforce (if any), Minneapolis Public Schools must be replaced with three separate districts.

I feel both amazement and sadness when I read descriptions of conditions that have become the norm, in which the ordinary is normal, and of the systems of bureaucracy and pedagogy that underpin them and seem both defensible and necessary. Yet I feel joy and hope. Joy and hope because I have a strong and abiding belief in the potential of all children and in the richness of the gifts that they bring to school, including their intelligence, their culture, and their humanity. Joy and hope, because I believe the first step in creating change is acknowledging the current reality of life in schools. Too many children have been left unengaged in a state of limbo in the non-learning zone of the school building that was meant to be their haven. The non-learning condition that exists in schools has not happened by accident. It is part of the structure and politics of the schools, and of the very nature of the human condition. This opinion brings the non-learning condition into the light. I write this because I could do better.

Next: Reimagining Minneapolis Public Schools into three separate school districts.

About the Author: Don Allen is a deeply committed and highly accomplished educator based in the Twin Cities. His academic credentials are substantial, including three master’s degrees, culminating in his doctorate in education this spring. Driven by a desire for educational innovation and systemic improvement, Don is a firm proponent of charter schools, viewing them as a necessary and viable alternative to traditional public education models. He believes that these institutions offer a pathway to improved student outcomes and greater flexibility in curriculum design and pedagogical approaches. Furthermore, Don is actively working to fundamentally reshape the educational landscape of the Twin Cities metropolitan area. He leads influential workgroups dedicated to resetting the region’s educational priorities, focusing on issues such as equity, resource allocation, and accountability. His objective is to move the conversation beyond surface-level changes and implement substantive reforms that address long-standing disparities and institutional failures. Readers interested in following Don’s insights, research, and ongoing advocacy for educational reform are encouraged to connect with him through his digital platform. His perspectives are regularly published on his website, Journal of A Black Teacher, which is hosted via the Blogger platform. This journal serves as a vital space for his critical analysis of the current state of education and outlines his vision for a more equitable and effective system.